


The Prisoner

by XiuChen4Ever



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Cat/Human Hybrids, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-03 22:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15828024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XiuChen4Ever/pseuds/XiuChen4Ever
Summary: It's hard for a stray to learn to stay.





	The Prisoner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ACatWhoWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACatWhoWrites/gifts).
  * Inspired by [No. 6](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4845542) by [ACatWhoWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ACatWhoWrites/pseuds/ACatWhoWrites). 



> A bit of a sequel, from Minseok's perspective.

Minseok sighed, fighting the urge to fidget.  He was bored and tired of holding still, but he needed to regain his discipline.  He'd been in one place too long.  He was starting to grow soft, and that was dangerous for a soldier like him.

Just one more reason he really needed to leave.

He was waiting right by the front door to the apartment he'd been bivouacking in for the last four weeks.  Four glorious weeks in this dry and climate-controlled place, full of comfortable furniture and readily-available, sanitary food, and--most dangerously--a tender-hearted, attractive man.

Yet another reason he was ready to dart out and away as soon as the heavy steel door opened even a crack.

He'd been a house guest for way too long, and he was the absolute worst house guest ever.  

For one thing, he'd showed up unexpectedly and wounded, making his adorable host drive him around in the middle of the night to find a medic.  Then, he'd accidentally wounded his host, too, after the man had been so kind to him.  And for weeks, he wasn't even able to converse and be good company for the man whose home he was sharing, partly because his injuries demanded recuperative sleep.

And partly because he spent roughly twenty hours a day as a cat.

It wasn't like Minseok chose to do so--it was a lot easier to defend oneself from bored neighborhood punks when one was a full-sized human.  But the experiment he'd been subjected to--the supposedly successful one--was intended to disguise soldiers as benign house pets, and so a benign house pet Minseok was.  

Most of the time, at least.

Sometimes he was a dangerous house pet whether he wanted to be or not, such as when his host, a dark-eyed, bright-hearted man called Jongdae, had dared to perform the incredibly threatening action of opening his refrigerator door.

Minseok had apologized, of course, just as soon as he'd had vocal cords capable of doing so, and Jongdae, empathetic and brave enough to rescue an injured alley cat from the revolting dumpster the neighborhood punks had thrown him into once they'd become bored with their cruel game of toss-the-kitty, had immediately forgiven him.

But Minseok had still felt a wave of remorse every time his host undressed for bed and his yellow feline eyes landed on the angry red weals his claws had left down the man's lean back.  They were almost completely healed now, just faint pink lines marring the sparsely-freckled skin, but though Jongdae couldn't see them himself without effort, they were a screaming reminder for Minseok of the danger he represented that his host was determined to ignore as easily as he did the fading scars on his back.

He really should leave, before he hurt Jongdae any worse.

Or before Minseok got any more attached.

It was hard not to like the handsome man who'd taken him in.  Jongdae was evidently the care-taking type, ready to sacrifice his own convenience for that of another, even someone he didn't know, even a mere stray cat.  And he'd accepted a naked man showing up in his living room to replace said stray cat with grace, immediately attempting to meet the injured soldier's needs just as readily as he had the battered feline's.

He was easy to talk to, with a gently-teasing sense of humor and a ready smile on his naturally turned-up lips.  And when Minseok wasn't in a form that let him hold up his end of the conversation, Jongdae filled in the silence himself with companionable chatter or soothing singing.

It would be really easy to fall for this man, as a friend or something more, but Minseok couldn't allow himself to get too close to anyone.  He was nothing but a ticking time bomb, engineered to bring only pain and death.

He'd put off leaving this soft, comfortable world for way too long.

At first, he'd told himself that it was because he was injured.  Even experimental supersoldiers needed to rest in order to heal well, after all, and by staying somewhere sheltered from the elements and eating regular meals, Minseok would heal faster.  Then, he told himself he was staying to work off his debt, using his scant few hours as a human to scour Jongdae's already-tidy apartment to his own strict military standards or cook him simple, easy-to-reheat meals, despite his host's protests.  Minseok wished he could do more, but he was merely a soldier, not a chef.  He hardly believed Jongdae's assertions that the pleasure of his company in the wee hours of the morning were at all worth the expense and schedule interruption Minseok was putting him through, but his hands were literally paws most of the time, so all he could do was lick them in frustration.

But now a month had passed and Minseok's wounds had healed, and he was well-rested and running out of excuses.  It was beyond time to go, and let this sweet, gentle man resume his sweet, gentle life.

Minseok sighed again, sleek black sides heaving with the exaggerated breath.  Putting it off any longer would only make it harder for both of them.  He needed to leave tonight, and he had to do it as soon as Jongdae opened that door, for both of their sakes.  Minseok knew that Jongdae wanted him to stay, and that by rocketing out of his life without saying goodbye, he'd once again hurt the man who'd been so kind to him.

But he'd rather break the kind man's heart than allow more scars to violate his smooth, perfect skin.

Minseok's own skin was far from smooth or perfect.  Between the experiments, the training, and his subsequent life on the streets, he carried his past with him written in Braille over his body.  As a cat, he only felt the irregularities, the puckered dips and angry bumps, the rough areas and the too-shiny ones, when he groomed himself.  The rest of the time, his lustrous black fur smoothed over the jagged outlines of his body, and when regular people noticed him at all, he garnered far more admiration than he did pity.

But here, as a human, when he bathed in Jongdae's luxurious tub he could see them all.  So could Jongdae, in the brief moment between his painful and sickening shift from cat to man and when Minseok pulled on his borrowed clothing.  And though the other man tried to hide it, Minseok could see the look of wincing sympathy that always flickered over Jongdae's face.

Minseok didn't want Jongdae's pity, he merely wanted to shield him from ever experiencing the same fate, and that was best done by leaving.

 

The main problem with Minseok's urge to leave was that Jongdae really, really wanted him to stay.

This was proven once again when the sound of Jongdae's keys in the lock finally juddered through the heavy door, and Minseok shifted his weight to his toes, hind end wiggling from side to side as he set his feet for optimal launch.  The knob turned, the door opened, and Minseok shot forward like a furry black bullet through the opening door--and right into a white plastic shopping bag that felt like it was full of rocks.

He reeled backward, neck arched, chin ducked to his chest, ears flat as he attempted to sooth his bruised skull (and bruised ego) and re-route himself.  He gathered his wits in mere seconds, but that was more than enough time for Jongdae to reach down and scoop Minseok up, holding him under the forearms as if he were a small child and nuzzling his nose against Minseok's gunmetal-gray whiskers.

"Minseok!" Jongdae exclaimed.  "You were just way too excited to see me, right?  You weren't actually trying to run off, were you?"

Minseok was flexible enough to get his back claws up to the frowning man's wrists and force him to drop the cat in his grip, but the whole point of leaving was to save Jongdae from further injury.  So Minseok merely dangled, averting his golden gaze.

In response to this clearly-evasive behavior, Jongdae's frown deepened and he cuddled Minseok close to his chest, so that the feline could feel the double-time cadence of the man's heart.

"Don't leave, Minseok, please.  We've talked about this."

They had talked about it, extensively.  For every one of Minseok's urgent reasons to leave, Jongdae had a compelling counter-attack.  

"You really want some guy living in your apartment who sheds all over your furniture and eats gross raw food and uses a litter box?" Minseok had attempted to disgust Jongdae one evening several weeks ago, when the two of them were side by side at the sink, washing up the evening's dishes.

Jongdae had only shrugged as his hands moved over the stoneware.  "I was prepared for a regular cat who'd do all those things, but instead I got one that cleans his own litter box, vacuums his own hair, and even sometimes cooks delicious food for me.  Tonight's bibimbap was really yummy."

"I'm glad you liked it," Minseok had said, accepting the now-clean bowl to wipe it dry.  "But I can't get a proper job or pay rent, and I don't help with enough chores to call it anywhere near even."

Jongdae had nudged him, chastising Minseok with his shoulder.  "You help with more chores than I'd ever expect or ask of you, and it's not like having you here really affects my budget.  I mean, you don't eat much, and my cousin makes sure I'm paid well, anyway.  We're definitely not gonna starve."

Minseok had frowned down at the rapidly-filling draining board.  "Maybe not, but I can't promise not to randomly claw you to ribbons again.  Last night was awful."  A car had backfired in the street outside the building, and Minseok had attempted to shred Jongdae, thankfully unable to do much damage through the thick, stretchy yarn of the hand-knit afghan Jongdae had thrown over the spitting feline.

Jongdae had handed him the rice pot to dry, then set about rinsing the sink.  "Yeah it was, and that absolutely sucks," he'd nodded at the stainless steel he'd been wiping.  "But while the scratches may hurt, I know you'd never do it on purpose, and I seriously doubt you'll actually kill me.  I'm in very superficial danger, and it's worth it to have you around."

Minseok had wrung out the dishcloth over Jongdae's busy hands, enjoying the faux-annoyed grumble the act elicited.  "Why do you like having me around so much?  Most of the time, I can't even answer you when you talk to me."

Jongdae had just shrugged as he offered Minseok a squirt of anti-bacterial hand soap and shifted so the two of them could wash their hands side by side.  "I'd talk whether you were here or not--it's really nice not to just be rambling to myself for a change, and unlike an actual cat, you understand what I say.  You're a really good listener, and I'm getting pretty good at understanding you even when you can't form proper syllables."

He'd lifted treacherously-long eyelashes to meet Minseok's questioning gaze.  "I'd really miss you if you left."

And then he'd led Minseok to the sofa to lounge and watch music videos on his laptop, refusing to entertain any more of Minseok's objections that night.

However, in response to the greatest of his house guest's concerns, Jongdae had carried Minseok around in a backpack a few nights later, wandering the streets aimlessly, ducking into an alley when Minseok had started making fretful little meows from within the bag.

He'd spread a blanket on the ground and set Minseok down on it, then kept a lookout while the feline shifted painfully into a man, retched over the filthy pavement, and quickly dressed in the clothing the backpack had also carried.  Then they'd walked over to a bench beneath a streetlight, where Minseok had held his hair away from the number 99 inked on his neck and Jongdae had used a flame-sterilized pocketknife blade to carefully excise the tracking chip from beneath his skin while murmuring a continuous stream of apologies.

They'd left the tracker in a dumpster.  Then, with a bandage stuck over the bleeding wound, Minseok had walked around on two feet, fully dressed, breathing fresh summer air and eating street food with Jongdae, freed of one more reason to leave as far as the man beside him was concerned.

The crinkles at the corners of Jongdae's eyes as he'd watched Minseok moan around the skewer of chicken in his mouth had threatened to shoot down the rest of his well-thought-out reasons to go.

 

As if he could see the memory currently replaying in Minseok's mind, Jongdae let a nuclear bomb slip through his lips where they were pressed to the downy-soft fur just behind Minseok's right ear, doing his best to obliterate the towering pile of rational reasons to walk out of Jongdae's life.

"I want you to stay, Minseok.  I like having you here."

Minseok had been put through extensive conditioning, to react, to kill, to cut off his mind from the violence his body was capable of committing on autopilot, but none of that had prepared him to deal with soft words from softer lips.

As he felt his tidy, organized pile of reasons begin to burn under this ridiculous assault, Minseok slumped his small form against Jongdae's chest, feeling it rumble beneath him with a satisfied hum.  He would have to wait for another opportunity to save this gentle man from himself.

"That's better," Jongdae murmured, tucking Minseok's head under his chin and carrying the cat with him to the kitchen along with the bag of dense, painful rocks.  "Come see what I have for you."

The rocks turned out to be daikons, but the surprise turned out to be fish--mackerel to be specific, as Minseok's nose had informed him as soon as his host unwrapped his prize.  Jongdae preened over his purchase as if he were the cat, dragging home his prey for Minseok's approval, beaming his aptly-feline smile as he held up the mottled silver fish for Minseok to see.

"Caught fresh today," he assured the cat, who perched in his usual spot on a tall kitchen stool, carefully positioned to have the best vantage point for watching Jongdae work while also monitoring the windows and the front door for any threats.  

Jongdae evidently intended to make braised mackerel with radish, and Minseok sat and listened to his host ramble pleasantly as he washed and chopped the daikon, onions, and chili peppers.  He twitched an ear or a tail periodically so Jongdae would know he was listening to his story about his cousin's ongoing playful feud with one of the parking attendants at their office building, who had evidently used thick white soap to leave an insulting message on the back of Joonmyun's car.

"And Joonmyun didn't even realize it until he'd driven all the way home--he couldn't figure out why so many people were honking and making rude gestures at him!"

It had taken three tries for Jongdae to get the sentence out in its entirety, because he kept interrupting himself with uncontrollable laughter.  Once freed by his eventual success, he bent over the countertop to guffaw, loud and obnoxious and grating to sensitive feline ears.

Minseok really should have hated it.  Instead, he found himself disappointed when the raucous sound finally dissolved into occasional snickers.

He had to leave soon or he would never be able to.  

It would be awkward to leave as a human without clothing, and Minseok wasn't going to steal any of Jongdae's.  But if this beautiful, ridiculous man wouldn't use his opposable thumbs to let Minseok exit the apartment, Minseok would risk public indecency and use his own, as soon as Jongdae fell asleep.

When he was calm enough to safely use the knife again, Jongdae disassembled the mackerel next, placing the severed heads neatly on a plate.  He set the dish on the floor for Minseok, who pounced down off his stool to devour the tasty morsels, pinning the slippery prey to the ceramic with his claws.  His raspy tongue flayed the delicious flesh from the bone beneath as Jongdae called his mother, putting the evident font of culinary knowledge on speaker as he made sure he was mixing the right spices into the braising liquid.

By the time Minseok was crunching happily on the last of the fragile skulls, the rest of the fish was simmering in a big pot on the stove along with the vegetables.  The air was thick with the scent of soy and garlic, and Jongdae's phone was emitting his favorite playlist in lieu of his mother's voice.  Midway through washing his face clean of lingering morsels, Minseok was scooped up by a giddy Jongdae, who twirled him around in the air as if they were dancing to the bright, bouncy love song that the music player had just shuffled to.

Minseok mustered up the most offended look he could manage on his tiny feline face.

Jongdae doubled over with laughter again, clutching Minseok to his sternum.  "Sorry, Minseok.  You're such a fierce, dignified little cat--I shouldn't steal that from you.  But someday, I'll make you dance with me on two feet, even if you're also a fierce, dignified human."

All Minseok could do was mutter his indignation to Jongdae's still-chuckling chest.  At least the man left off the adjective 'little' when describing Minseok in human form.

 

But soon, that chest was horizontal beneath Minseok's kneading paws as Jongdae settled on the couch to wait for the mackerel to braise.  He turned off the music on his phone, opened the laptop on the coffee table beside them, and brought up a local news feed.  He let the live video play in a corner of the screen while he browsed various social media sites with one hand and stroked the cat on his sternum with the other. 

Minseok purred beneath the slowly-moving hand along his back, trying not to stare at the way Jongdae's lower lip was casually drawn between his teeth.  Instead, he turned his head away, gazing at the laptop screen through half-shut eyes until a too-familiar image made him stand up on his toes, claws out, back arched, and fur puffed as he hissed.

Jongdae's arms closed around the cat on top of him, pinning Minseok tight against his body in comfort and self-defense.  "Hey!  _Shhh_.  C'mon, Minseok, just relax.  Quit poking me with your claws."

Minseok did his best to retract his nails as he allowed himself to be crushed against the cotton-covered warmth, but he still shook with alarm and rage as he stared at his own human face on the laptop screen.

"...though he has a psychotic penchant for nudity he should be considered armed and extremely dangerous, and anyone who sees this man should avoid contact and call--"

The announcer's voice cut off suddenly as Jongdae folded the laptop shut.

"Hey," Jongdae said again, keeping one arm clasped tightly around the vibrating body on his sternum, lifting the other hand from the laptop to rub his knuckles soothingly against Minseok's jaw.  "You're safe here--I've got you."

Minseok  _really_ needed to leave.  Preferably yesterday.  His towering pile of reasons was about to topple down upon them both.

"You're fine," Jongdae's voice continued, rumbling as much into Minseok's body through the chest pressed tight against his paws as it did through the ears pressed flat against his skull.  "This is good--it means removing the tracker worked, right?  They don't know where you are."

Minseok started purring to himself softly, trying to soothe his heart rate back into the normal range.  Jongdae had dug out the tracker two weeks ago.  It made sense that they'd try to find their missing subject another way once they'd realized what had happened.  But despite the shrapnel of Jongdae's reassuring words embedded in his mind, Minseok's muscles twitched and rippled beneath his still-puffed-up fur, restless in the shadow of so many reasons to run, hide, dive into a foxhole far away from this innocent boy.

He was jarred from his shell shock by the sound of one of Jongdae's favorite ballads pouring from the re-opened laptop, and Minseok's purring became considerably less forced as soon as the man beneath him started singing.

Jongdae's pleasant voice, as usual, did a lot to fan the flames threatening to burn all of Minseok's anxious reasons to the ground.  The smell of the simmering mackerel as Jongdae got up to tend the fish, Minseok still cradled to his sternum, certainly didn't hurt, either.

Jongdae hardly put Minseok down for the rest of the evening.  He held the cat on his lap at the kitchen table as he ate his portion of mackerel.  He slung him over one shoulder as he packaged the rest of the fish for Minseok to eat once his stomach was big enough to hold a human-sized serving.  And he draped him over his chest once again after Jongdae had finished his night-time routine and was settled in the bed he insisted on sharing with Minseok whether he had two legs or four.

"Everything's just gonna be fine," he murmured to the wide-eyed little feline.

Minseok sincerely doubted that. 

 

The more he thought about it, the more urgent the need to retreat into the night became.  He couldn't bear it if they found him here, if he drug sweet, harmless Jongdae into a nightmare because he was harboring a covert military fugitive.

But Jongdae didn't let him go all night.  He kept Minseok wrapped in his arms against his chest even as he fought his own sleepiness, the lyrics he was crooning becoming slurred, the fingers rubbing velvet ears slowing, pausing, and then jerking once again into motion.  Minseok tried to extricate himself when Jongdae finally nodded off, but the man beneath him woke as soon as the cat moved, determinedly tightening his grip.

Sighing, Minseok gave up.  Until tonight, Jongdae had always been polite (or repulsed) and had averted his gaze whenever it became obvious that Minseok was about to shift, and while the cat could use his claws to force the issue and gain some privacy, he settled in to wait instead.  If Jongdae wanted an up-close and personal show starring Minseok wailing brokenly on top of him as his bones shattered and muscles stretched, that was what he was going to get.  Maybe it would convince him to finally let Minseok go.

And it indeed seemed like it was more than Jongdae had bargained for, because by the time Minseok was human again, the man beneath him was breathing heavily, the whites of his eyes on display as the orbs threatened to go AWOL from his skull.  Jongdae's mouth was open in a horrified gape, but the only sounds in the dim bedroom were Minseok's shuddering breaths as he fought not to throw up all over his host.

But when Minseok's breathing eased, Jongdae's did, too, and the arms that had been wrapped around him for hours settled around his new form as if it were no big deal, as if horror-movie sequences played out on Jongdae's chest all the time.

"Well, that certainly explains the puking," Jongdae twisted half a smile up at Minseok.  "I almost wanted to be sick on your behalf."

Minseok felt his cheeks heat.  He didn't ask to be like this--a dangerous, revolting creature with a singular, lethal purpose.  But that was what he was, whether he--or anyone else--liked it or not. 

"It's not pretty," he agreed.  "Nothing about my life is pretty.  You've been so kind to me, Jongdae, but I really have to go.  It's not safe--"

Jongdae cut him off with a finger against Minseok's lips.  "I know it isn't safe," he said, uncharacteristically cheerlessly.  "I have the scars on my back to prove it--and I've seen the scars on yours.  I'm not dumb enough to think that the people that are looking for you are just trying to come to your birthday party."

"I don't even know when my birthday is," Minseok said.  He was a weapon, a war machine, and while his date of manufacture was sure to be carefully noted in some top-secret dossier somewhere, it wasn't something anybody thought necessary to inform him of, much less celebrate. 

"We can share mine--it's coming up in the fall, and I want you to be there for it.  I want you to be there for all my birthdays, Minseok.  I--"  Jongdae's frustration-filled eyes ricocheted back and forth across Minseok's face.  

Those dark eyes suddenly hardened with determination, and one of the arms around his body let go so that Jongdae could cradle the back of Minseok's head and pull him down to press their lips together.

Minseok froze, suddenly very aware that he was stark naked on top of an attractive man's chest.  However they engineered him to become a cat, they didn't manage to engineer out certain physical needs, and Minseok had only ever been surrounded by other soldiers--other men.  This was far from the first time masculine lips had collided with his own. 

But the lips that were moving tenderly but insistently against Minseok's at the moment didn't belong to another horny soldier, ready and willing to engage in an act of mutual physical release.  They belonged to a man who was kind and generous, sassy and funny, brave and loyal, and for some reason he actually seemed to  _like_  Minseok and it took a moment before he was able to decide how to respond to the kiss that was only going to backfire on both of them.  

It wasn't that Minseok was surprised that Jongdae wanted to kiss him in the first place.  The man did nothing to camouflage his growing fondness for and attraction to his guest.  But while his host was affectionate with him in feline form, Jongdae had always been so careful to respect Minseok's boundaries as a human.  Sure, he'd helped Minseok do things like bathe or dress in those early days when he was so injured, but he'd always been nonchalant about it.  He'd hardly dared hug Minseok, even once his bruises faded.  The surprising part of this kiss was that Jongdae was actually charging forward, even though Minseok had done his best to disengage.

Yet here he was, nude, crushed to Jongdae's torso and desperately being devoured.  And despite the looming presence of his tower of reasons not to, Minseok's lips were responding, moving in a counterpoint to the unwise maneuvers started by the other.  Jongdae was intoxicating, his lips tasting as sweet as his voice sounded when it sang Minseok to sleep.  The kiss shouldn't have been happening, but Minseok was glad it was.  

Leaving was going to hurt even more now, yet Minseok almost relished the pain.  At least it was a reminder that he still had a heart to break.

But Minseok pulled back when Jongdae moaned against his lips, regret filling his soul as he gazed down at the too-tempting man beneath him.  A kiss was one thing.  The arousal pressing against his pelvis through the rumpled bedclothes was another entirely.

"I really should go," Minseok said again, feeling the weight of all his logical reasons even as Jongdae quirked kiss-reddened lips into a wry smile.

"But you don't want to," Jongdae challenged, a spark in his dark eyes.

"I don't," Minseok admitted.

"Then stay," Jongdae said, as if it were that simple to walk away from all of his reasons to walk out.

When Minseok opened his mouth to explain for the hundredth time why staying was a terrible idea, Jongdae leaned up to nip his bottom lip, taking advantage of the moment of surprise to overrule all of Minseok's careful objections.

"I know, Minseok," he said.  "You think you're dangerous, and that the people who were tracking you are dangerous.  You're probably right.  But no one's life is perfectly safe.  I'm an adult, and can make informed decisions.  I know it's risky, but I'd rather have you here, knowing that things might end badly someday, than watch you walk out that door and end things  _now_."

Jongdae squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep shuddering breath before opening them again to meet Minseok's rueful gaze.  "But I won't keep you prisoner.  If you really feel like you have to leave, well, you're also an adult."

Minseok  _really_ should have left days ago.

But he didn't, and now he was trapped in Jongdae's eyes.  

"Are you really so lonely that you're happy to let a cat-shaped fugitive live in your apartment because for a few hours a day he's a human you evidently want to make out with?" Minseok asked, trying hard to scowl down at the man beneath him.

But Jongdae was scowling right back up at him.  "Are you really so cold that you're happy to live on the streets, naked and alone, without any comfort or companionship at all?"

 _Yes_ , Minseok should have said.   _I am a weapon.  I am a beast._   But Jongdae's always-sparkling eyes were so serious, and his made-for-smiling mouth was set into a humorless line.  Unable to lie, Minseok merely trapped both his lips between his teeth, squeezing them together around the words that wouldn't come out.

Jongdae's eyebrows softened, flicking up appealingly toward the middle of his forehead.  "I like hanging out with you even when you're not a human.  You're always good company, and maybe I am a bit lonely.  I have amazing friends, and my cousin is great, but having you around makes me feel a different kind of content.  Maybe it's selfish of me to want to keep you here when you're probably bored out of your skull all day, but I've spent my own days stupidly happy knowing I won't be coming home to an empty apartment, that you'll be waiting for me, that you'll pretend to be interested in my relatively-dull life as I yammer excitedly at you."

Minseok opened his mouth to respond but Jongdae barreled on as if he'd rehearsed this, as if he needed to say everything as one complete unit.  "I know we still don't know each other all that well, and I know I'm just an ordinary guy, not some hard-bodied hero like you are, but... I really like you.  And, yeah, I'd really enjoy making out with you, o-or anything else you might want to do when you're a human."

He blushed endearingly at this last bit, but his arms stayed firmly clasped around Minseok's bare torso.

"Maybe I'm naive, but I think the risk of having you here is worth the reward.  So if you need to leave for your own reasons, because a super-cat-soldier isn't cut out for domestic life, then I guess I can try to understand--though I'd love it if you visited me as often as possible.  But if you feel the need to leave because you think you're somehow doing  _me_  a favor, then please..."

Jongdae's chest was so warm beneath Minseok's, and he looked up at him through those long, dark lashes, brows still quirked in mute appeal.

"Just... stay."

Minseok tried to tell himself he should leave, even as all of his reasons were rendered into ash by the heat in Jongdae's eyes.

Sure, they could find him again.  In fact, they probably would, eventually.  But Minseok was a "super-cat-soldier," after all.  Instead of abandoning the battlefield, Minseok could stand and fight.  If Jongdae was bold enough to strike a spark between them, Minseok would be brave enough to shield the growing flame.

"You're anything but ordinary, Jongdae," Minseok murmured.  

Then, as the last of his objections were burned away by the fire in those obsidian eyes, Minseok leaned down to let Jongdae's lips set him ablaze.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first fic fest, and it was a lot of fun! I usually write long, involved stories, so it was a challenge to keep things short and simple. To echo the original fic, I used past tense instead of my usual present, stopped short of my typical gratuitous smut, and nobody even swears. I don't know who I am anymore. :)
> 
> The original work has this fantastic Sci-Fi AU concept as a backdrop that is never really explored because Jongdae cares less about why a cat turned into a man and more about what he can do to help his new houseguest. While it was tempting to flesh out Minseok's backstory even more, I liked the original story's focus on the connection between the two despite the unusual circumstances. I went with that idea as well, this time filtered through Minseok's eyes.
> 
> The original author is one of my favorites--I really hope I did the original work justice!


End file.
